


born under a bad sign

by queenbaskerville



Series: in the old grip of the familiar [2]
Category: Dark (TV 2017)
Genre: Angst, Canon Compliant, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Missing Persons, Missing Scene, Non-Linear Narrative, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Season/Series 01 Spoilers, Season/Series 02 Spoilers, mention of suicide
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-05-11
Updated: 2020-05-11
Packaged: 2021-03-02 18:01:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,382
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24121006
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/queenbaskerville/pseuds/queenbaskerville
Summary: Hannah copes with her son going missing.
Relationships: Hannah Kahnwald & Jonas Kahnwald, Hannah Kahnwald/Michael Kahnwald | Mikkel Nielsen, Hannah Kahnwald/Ulrich Nielsen
Series: in the old grip of the familiar [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1740445
Comments: 12
Kudos: 78





	born under a bad sign

**Author's Note:**

> here i am, still thinking about dark. 
> 
> fic title from ["poltergeist" by the mountain goats.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZLNAZhTZNm8)
> 
> happy mother's day

**(4)**

Hannah plays the last conversation she had with her son over and over in her head. She thinks about it when she brushes her teeth. When she washes her face. When she puts her makeup on. She thinks about it when she works. When she takes photo albums out and spreads them out, flips through them. When she sits at her kitchen table, takes Boris Niewald's gun from the little tin box it resides in, and points it at the empty air. When she checks her phone for messages—from the police, from Ulrich, from anyone—and there's nothing there. She thinks about it before she goes to sleep. And when she can't sleep. 

Jonas had come down the stairs wet from the rain. He hadn't looked right. She can't exactly remember the expression on his face. But he'd had a split lip. And he had bruises on his face, fresh ones.

_"What happened to you?"_

_"I got into a fight."_

He'd been cold when she rested her hand on his cheek and gently turned his face just slightly to get a better look at his injuries. His skin was cold. He'd been wet from the rain. His face, his hair. His jacket, too, when he'd hugged her. Cold and damp. 

Hannah has nightmares about it. She dreams she's walking down an alley, like from an American crime show. Jonas had never cared for that sort of thing. There's no reason for it to be an alley. There's no reason for it to be American. But it is. And she walks down the alley. There's a shape at the end of the alley. She knows it's a body. And there's this dread that creeps up, even as she keeps walking forward. She kneels down next to it and turns its face toward her. As soon as her hand touches it, it's Jonas, in his yellow coat, and how had she not seen that coat when she looked down the alley? Why, why hadn't she known, why hadn't she recognized him, why hadn't she run forward, why is his skin so cold? Her Jonas, cold and dead under her hands. 

She always wakes gently. She blinks her eyes open, completely still, as if there had been no dream, even though it's at the forefront of her mind, her fingers still cold. Michael had been the sort to gasp awake, to sit up in fright, leaping awake and away from intangible terrors. It was a subconscious thing, to train herself to wake silently. She only ever jolted awake if she was startled by something external. Michael's nightmares, for example. Michael never slept enough, and when he did sleep, it often wasn't restful. Unless he took sleeping pills, which he hated to do. Hannah tried to wake as silently as possible if she had nightmares or woke before him. She didn't want to disturb him.

Of course, Michael isn't here now. No one is. She could scream or shout or leap from her bed and no one would hear her.

Hannah does none of those things. She gets up. She brushes her teeth. She washes her face. She thinks about her son.

_"I got into a fight."_

Her sweet boy, getting into a fight? Her Jonas? He'd never.

* * *

**(6)**

Hannah goes to the police station once a week. With the exception of Charlotte Doppler and the man with the eye injury—Wöller, she thinks his name is—all their faces blend together. She speaks to them all the same way. There's no point in being anything but polite and patient. It will not change their answers. It will not change the apologetic looks on their faces as soon as she walks through the station doors, as if she doesn't know. Come on. She's not an idiot. She _knows_.

But she comes to the police station anyway. It is a routine. It is what she has to do.

"Anything?" she asks. 

"No," they say. Sometimes they say, "I'm sorry." 

She does not accept or reject the apology. It means nothing to her. This is how it has always gone. This is how it will always be. If Ulrich Nielsen's son, a _policeman's_ son, went missing and they didn't find him—and _Ulrich himself—_ then what hope is there for her boy?

Jonas is gone. She _knows_.

She will be back again next week.

* * *

**(5)**

Ines Kahnwald never answers her damn phone anymore. Hannah has called three times this afternoon. She called yesterday. She'll probably get frustrated later this week and call again.

"If you know where he is, you have to tell me," Hannah says after the phone beeps and begins recording her voicemail. "He's your grandson. Tell the police, at least. You know something, don't you? That's why you're not answering me? Hm? Is that it? You know something and you're feeling guilty about it?"

Hannah hangs up.

Ines probably doesn't know anything. What would Ines know? She hasn't seen Jonas since before Michael died. Hannah knows that. It doesn't stop her from calling one more time, trying to see if she'll answer. If all this had brought the two of them closer together, maybe that could've helped. But of _course_ that woman shuts Hannah out. _Again_.

* * *

**(2)**

Did he hang himself in the woods somewhere?

Hannah stands in her kitchen the night Jonas doesn't come home, jacket on, flashlight in hand. But she can't make herself walk toward the door.

_"I left something at school."_

She'd gone to the school when dinnertime came around and he still wasn't home. He wasn't there. She drove up and down the streets from the school to her house and back again, looking for his bike, for that flash of yellow he wore everywhere. She called the Nielsens. They didn't answer. She thought her lies about the affair had bought her some time with Katharina, but maybe, away from Hannah's house, she'd had more time to think over Hannah's words and found them wanting. Maybe she was deliberately ignoring her calls now. If only Hannah had Martha's and Magnus's phone numbers—why, why didn't she have them?

Hannah called the Tiedemanns. They didn't answer either. 

Maybe she just missed Jonas. She was driving and he was biking and maybe they were both missing each other. Maybe he just got home. 

Hannah passed missing posters for Erik Obendorf, Yasin Friese, and Mikkel Nielsen. She felt sick to her stomach.

She went home. Jonas wasn't there. Dinner cooled, uneaten. And now she's wearing her jacket, clutching this flashlight, wondering if her son had done something that would've been unimaginable a few years ago.

Hannah tightens her grip on the flashlight in her hand and doesn't tremble. But she doesn't walk toward the door, either.

_"It doesn't matter."_

Why had he said that? Why had she let him say it? Why hadn't she said anything back?

_This isn't fair,_ she thinks. _Damn you, Michael._

Michael had not said that. He had not said anything to her at all. Her husband killed himself without saying a word. So had it been some sort of sign she missed, what Jonas had said? She doesn't know. She missed it, didn't she? Whatever sign he was trying to give?

_"Everything will be fine."_

What did it _mean_? 

She can't walk out the door. She can't do it. When Michael had died, Hannah'd had the unbearably selfish thought: Thank God she had not been the one to discover Michael in his art room. She'd crushed the thought as immediately as it had come— _Jona_ s had found Michael, and she would have done anything to take that pain from her son. _Anything_.

Hannah had checked the art room an hour ago, and she'd gripped the banister on the stairs so tightly she thought it might crumple and splinter under her hands. She'd thought, maybe, this was her punishment, for that selfish thought the first time. She was the first person to see Jonas when he came into this world, so it made a sick sense that she would be the last person to see him, too. Like a horrible snake swallowing itself. But Jonas had not been there. She'd almost collapsed on the stairs with the heavy relief of it. 

The relief did not last. He still isn't here at all. And now she cannot bring herself to go into the forest and find her son. If he's there. If he hanged himself. 

But he didn't, right? He'd have done it in the art room if he was going to do it at all, right?

Hannah needs to go look. But she can't move.

Maybe his phone has died and he's staying at the Nielsens' house. And Katharina isn't calling her because she's punishing Hannah for lying about Ulrich. Maybe Jonas is at the Tiedmann's and they've forgotten to call. That would be just like Regina, wouldn't it? Causing a fuss at the parent assembly at the high school about how the first missing boy hadn't meant anything, and now thinks nothing of what another parent might be feeling.

Jonas will come back in the morning.

Hannah takes off her jacket. She puts the flashlight back in a kitchen drawer. She goes to bed. She doesn't sleep well.

Jonas does not come back in the morning.

* * *

**(3)**

A search party assembles behind Hannah's house. She watches them from an upstairs window. She is a bit taken aback by how many people show up—the police, as expected, Charlotte and the eye-injury fellow and them, but also Charlotte's husband Peter Doppler (he'd helped counsel Jonas for a little while, she remembers), and some people Hannah remembers from high school, and a few people she doesn't know. And two of Jonas's friends, Martha Nielsen and Bartosz Tiedemann. 

Hannah also notices who isn't there. The other Nielsen—Magnus. And Katharina didn't bother. Neither did Regina nor her husband. But what did Hannah expect?

It had been the man with the eye-injury who'd first come out to her house, the morning she woke up and Jonas was still not home. He interviewed her, and another officer took a few cursory photos of the interior of the house, as well as Jonas's room. The officer whose eye was messed up—his name started with a W, maybe—he kept his voice quiet, as if he was trying not to wake anyone. _There's no one here_ , she wanted to say. _That's why I called you_. She didn't raise her voice at him. He had the gentle expression of someone trying to soothe a dying animal's passing. What a horrible thing. 

Charlotte Doppler had not been as gentle in the second interview, but she had not been unkind, either. She asked a lot of the same questions, but Hannah answered every one. Yes, Jonas had come home and left again. To and from school. Hannah told her everything. Everything Jonas had said. 

_"Don't worry. Everything will be fine, Mom."_

Hannah didn't know how to describe what Jonas hadn't said. Hannah had no idea at all how to parse its meaning. But there'd been a weight in the air. Something wrong with his expression. When he'd hugged her. When he'd let go. The way he looked at her, completely still, making eye contact, but impossible to read. That smile he'd forced. Something had been _wrong_.

Hannah hadn't been able to look at Charlotte much at the station. She'd been too busy staring at her hands clenched in her lap, too busy trying to warm her fingers, too busy remembering the chill of Jonas's skin.

"We'll look for him," Charlotte had said.

Here they are now. Looking.

Hannah thinks, for a moment, of going down to join the search party. Hannah can see Charlotte giving instructions and answering questions asked of her. Hannah should go down.

She can't. She turns away from the window.

* * *

**(1)**

Hannah's water breaks while Michael is on a grocery run. Hannah curses, suspecting that Michael will take this as a bad omen or a warning from God, and he might cloister himself in their home for a little while. It would be a good thing from any other man, that he'll be home to help her with their baby, but Michael has always been a little odd about leaving the house. Maybe _always_ is the wrong word—it hadn't really started until adulthood—but it's a hit or miss what he'll say if she asks him to go somewhere. This might be another push in the wrong direction, him being gone while her water breaks.

She puts a hand over her stomach. _Couldn't you wait just a little longer?_

Hannah leaves a note for Michael and phones an ambulance.

Their baby is an impatient little thing—the delivery is painful, but it's quicker than most, and Hannah delivers their son alone. She has no idea if or when Michael will arrive. The nurse with the blank birth certificate gives her a sympathetic look.

Even at nine months, they hadn't decided on names. Hannah had already decided against Ines for a girl before Michael could even think about suggesting it—she has no idea if he would've, but she wouldn't stand for it if he had. That meant it hadn't seemed fair to suggest Sebastian, her father's name, if they had a boy. They'd tossed a few other names back and forth, but had never settled on any. 

Michael had said, "Maybe we'll pick one at the hospital."

Well, he's not here.

August? Klaus? Otto? Michael might like a Biblical name—Simon? Peter? Adam? Jonas?

Hannah looks down at her son's little face, his eyes squeezed shut and his tiny hand clutching a dangling strand of her hair.

"Jonas," she whispers. "Is that you? Hmm? Is that your name?"

Harried footsteps catch her attention, and she looks up to see Michael, consumed by panic, followed by an exasperated nurse.

"I'm so sorry; I came as soon as I could," Michael says. "Are you alright?"

"We're both fine," Hannah says. "Come meet your son."

A smile blooms on Michael's face, bright and thrilled.

"Our son," he echoes. 

Once Michael is sitting in a chair next to Hannah's bed, she allows him to hold the baby. Michael cradles him gently. He looks as if he might cry. 

"He's so small," he says.

"What do you think about the name Jonas?" Hannah says.

Michael doesn't seem to hear her at first, but he slowly turns his gaze from their son and blinks at her.

"Jonas," he says. The word seems to weigh heavy on his tongue, like he has never heard it before.

Hannah almost gets snippy with him, almost says, _Never mind,_ almost says, _If it's so strange then we'll pick something else_ , but Michael smiles again.

"It's a wonderful name," Michael says. He looks back at their son. "Hello, Jonas," he whispers. "It's nice to meet you."

* * *

**(7)**

Hannah sees missing posters every time she leaves her house. Erik Obendorf, Yasin Friese, Ulrich Nielsen, Mikkel Nielsen, Jonas Kahnwald. She tries not to look at them most of the time. But there's one afternoon when she's on the way to the supermarket, and she has a quick and vicious thought: _At least Katharina and I are the same. We have both lost a son. We have both lost Ulrich._

Then, in the moment after, guilt makes her stomach drop. She knows now how it feels to lose a son. She knows. It's a bitter thought. It's not something she should be thinking.

At the supermarket, she runs into Magnus and Martha. 

"Mrs. Kahnwald," Martha says. It seems like it's all she can say.

Magnus waits a beat and then gently takes over.

"We're sorry about Jonas," he says. 

"Thank you," Hannah says. "I know you were good friends."

Magnus nods. Martha looks down, maybe to hide tears.

"I'm sorry about your brother," Hannah adds. "And your father."

Oh, Ulrich.

"Thanks," Magnus says.

"Is Katharina here?" Hannah says, glancing around. 

"Why would she be," Martha says.

It wouldn't mean anything—of course two teenagers can shop on their own—except Martha's tone is _bitter_ when she says it.

"She's having a hard time," Magnus says, looking apologetic.

It's unclear at this point whether he's referring to Katharina or Martha. 

Hannah takes pity on them both and says, "It was good to see you," and they say their goodbyes. Hannah waits until they've turned the corner of the aisle before letting her anger loose. Her grocery list crumples in her hand.

Katharina has this. Two children, still here. Katharina has won, again. And she's throwing it away! They're upset and Katharina is not here, she has left them alone. Katharina is throwing away her victory while Hannah is left with _nothing_.

Hannah knows it had hurt Katharina desperately when she'd lied and told Katharina that Ulrich never loved her. Hannah wishes she'd had something worse to say. 

* * *

**(8)**

There had been a night when Jonas had woken her, wearing his coat and an unnaturally blank look on his face, and when she'd asked him what was wrong, he'd asked her if she believed in fate. She'd said maybe it's fate that men leave her. She hadn't even known then how bad it would get. Ulrich had been _leaving_ , but he hadn't been _missing_. And, God, Jonas had been _right there_. But of course she wouldn't have counted Jonas then: he was a boy, not a man. He was just a boy. So why was he gone, too?

Her father is long dead. Her husband killed himself. Ulrich abandoned her and then vanished. And now her son has disappeared. Everyone gone. Dead or likely dead. Were they all marked for death? How does she keep finding men like this? How does she keep ending up here? Is it her? Does she kill everything she touches? 

She's being dramatic. She makes herself a cup of tea and drinks it with trembling hands.

Her son. Her boy. She and Michael had bought him a bicycle for his eighth birthday, and he'd rode it right into the ditch the day he got it. The front wheel had busted. Jonas had sobbed, and they'd been terrified that he was hurt, but he was apologizing—not just to them, but to the bike, too. He was that kind, even at eight. That's just who he was.

_Was_. Past-tense. 

_I just want them back,_ she thinks. Michael is dead, but Ulrich and Jonas—it's killing her, the uncertainty and the waiting and the wondering. How could they both be gone? Her son and her Ulrich? 

_If I can just have one,_ she thinks _. Did I want too much? Let me have my son back. Just him. Please. I won't make the same mistakes._

* * *

**(9)**

The box that holds Boris Niewald's passport and gun is a small green thing with faux-gold embellishments. Its weight in her hands had been strange the first time she'd dug it up, but the more she'd acquainted herself with the gun, the less strange the box had become. It was old and familiar to her now. An old friend, if she was going to be cliche. It had even outlived her husband and her son.

The lid of the box opens easily. Hannah's hand does not shake when she lifts the gun out. 

Hannah's forehead is damp with sweat. The newspaper clippings sprawled out on the table keep Jonas's young face in her line of sight. He's always in her line of sight, dull-eyed and sad-looking. Had he always looked that way? She can't remember. 

What day is it? When was the last time she'd showered? She can't remember that either. Not that it matters now. 

_"It doesn't matter."_

She points the gun across the table at the empty air, like she has done many times before. One-handed. There is no one there.

_"Everything will be fine, Mom."_

The gun is still in her hands. She's shaking now. When did that start?

It doesn't matter. It's in her hands. It's moving as her arm moves. It's pressed up under her chin. It's cold. 

Each slow, shallow breath is more difficult than the last.

_Everyone's gone,_ she thinks. _I am alone._

And then someone unlocks the front door.


End file.
